this is bbc news. we will have the headlines and all the main news stories for you at the top of the hour as newsday continues straight after hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk with me, zeinab badawi. i'm in the serpentine galleries in london where there is a major exhibition of the work of the renowned american artist barbara chase—riboud. her art is on display in museums around the world, and she is also an award—winning novelist and poet. throughout her long career, barbara has been fascinated

by public memorials and her sculptures honour various historical and culturalfigures. but how should society commemorate controversial people from the past? barbara chase—riboud, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. we're sitting here at a major exhibition of your work called infinite folds, and you started your artistic training at the age of seven. how on earth did you know at that early age that you wanted to become an artist? i didn't know i wanted to be an artist. it was my mother and my grandmother who decided that i was going to have something to do with the arts. they weren't quite sure what. you were 16 and you were

the youngest person to ever have a work acquired by moma, the museum of modern art in new york. it was reba, which was a woodcut print of a young girl with a plant next to her. and you have said that "success as a child came easily to me," and that "i grew up as a confident, curious child, "not willing to settle for anything but the best." were you always very ambitious from an early age? i wouldn't call it ambition. i didn't know what it was. i knew that i wanted to do something, you know, significant, but i had no idea what and i had no idea how. and i had no concept of the world except my little family, which is very small. you know, it was very intimate. and it seemed to me that the world was intimate too.

i mean, i didn't... i wasn't afraid of people and i wasn't afraid of the world. i wasn't afraid of, um... ..stepping out and having opinions about things. 0k. well, that lack of fear and stepping out is very much reflected in your work. you have a very innovative, experimentative approach to your work, and you forge figures in bronze, for instance, using animal bones and vegetable matter. mm—hm. you know? and we're looking at adam and eve from 1958, which is being shown publicly for the first time, and it depicts two figures entwined underneath a tree canopy. and you completed that whilst you were at the american academy in rome. but, you know, art critics, barbara, find it very hard to describe the genre of your work. how would you, in a nutshell, describe it? it is hard to describe. and it changed so much over

the years, which are very long. and i would say that i'm a surrealist, abstract, um... what can i say? poetic... ..literary. .. ..artist. and there is this combination of literature and visual art that are so entwined now, although i tried to keep them separate most of my career, but now they have simply resurged in their own way, and so i'm...|'m stuck with it. one of the features of the way you work is that you also like to commemorate.

the commemorative aspect of your work is very important. so, for example, this sculpture ofjosephine baker, the celebrated african—american, black american singer—actress. this is the last... yeah. this is the last big monument. this is the last series of, you know, of steles that arrived absolutely un. .. you know, i had no idea i was going to do ajosephine until i did it. so how important is that commemorative aspect of your work to you? why is it so significant? i think that is not only commemorative, but it's also the poetic... ..the poetic aspect of my work. and it's there as a persona. these sculptures are notjust sculptures in space. they are also personas.

they are also histories and monuments of these people. so included in your sculptures are the stelae to malcolm x, the assassinated civil rights activist who was killed in 1965 and a very hugely important figure for you. and you say that his assassination came like a bombshell to you. how did you feel at the time when you heard about his death? and how did that influence the stelae, which have taken you the best part of five decades to make? i had been living in europe for many, many years when malcolm was assassinated, and it was at his assassination that i realised... you know, the shock of it,

i realised that this was... ..one of the most important figures in history and at such a young age, and these steles were not the essence of revolution. the essence of a martyr. and theyjust grew like topsy, one after the other. i made... first i made four. certainly in american history. and i was outraged, you know, that his life had been taken at such a young age, and these steles were not supposed to be, you know, portraits of him or political statements. it was the essence of... the essence of malcolm. the essence of revolution. the essence of a martyr. and theyjust grew like topsy, one after the other. i made... first i made four. then maybe ten years later, i made another four. and then maybe... ..15 years later,

i made another ten. but, barbara, you say what an important figure malcolm x was, and you were really a bit of a trailblazer yourself. african american woman, black american woman, studied at temple university, yale school of architecture and design. you were the first black american woman to receive a masters in fine arts. and yet, you decided to settle in paris, in france, late 1960, 1961. but why did you not stay in the united states and be part of the civil rights movement if it was so important to you? it was not a question of going or staying for me. it was a question of my own... it was a question of my own...life. it was my own star i was following.

it was... i was supposed to have a life in london, as a matter of fact, when i left yale, and something happened. and so my sort of... ..interest in history and in monuments and so on is not... it is part of me, but not the main part, not the... not the very soul of me. it is more like following the star, following my own path, following my own destiny. but you didn't want to use any influence you might have had to help advance the civil rights movement by staying in the united states?

well, i married a frenchman. i was a runaway bride. they chuckle. i was a runaway bride. any regrets? we went to paris for the weekend. and the man i married was a world traveller, was one of the great photographers of the world. that's marc riboud, the late french photographer. and he sort of opened up a whole new universe to me, which was international, which was... ..had nothing to do with america or europe or africa, but had to do with everything. and so i became this kind of country—hopping, international, you know, explorer, whatever, that i had started in egypt on my own with him,

which lasted 20 years. so he opened up a whole new world for you. but you always maintained this interest in monuments, as you said, and i want to ask you about the controversy that we have been debating all over the world, really, about the role of monuments in society. here in the united kingdom, for instance, the 17th century slave trader edward colston had his statue torn down by an angry crowd and they threw it into the water. you have had the controversies in the united states about confederate statues and so on. where do you stand on this? should monuments come down if some people deem them offensive? where? well, my stance on that is very famous. my stance on that is what i did with thomas jefferson. i should just remind everybody you're referring to the fact there's a historical novel you wrote in 1979 about sally

hemings, who was the enslaved woman in the united states, who had a relationship and bore seven children to thomasjefferson, the third president of the united states. why was it important for you to tell that story? i didn't think that it was as important as it turned out to be. i had looked at, you know, the relationship of this invisible woman with the most powerful man in the world, really, in the western world, as a kind of mythic. it's a sort of half love, half hate story to tell. i mean, it was... it's operatic in its, you know, in its stance. and it was only after all

the hullabaloo and all, you know, the controversy, which lasted for 38 years. mm. 38 years. and it was finally solved by dna. some people didn't actually want to accept that the story was true, that thomas jefferson had this relationship with a black woman. the jeffersonians didn't. thejeffersonians didn't want to accept it. yeah. the public did. the public realised that this was a possibility. because you did a follow—up book as well and, indeed, you... idid. you received awards for that work. not only did i do a follow—up, the president's daughter, but this book began a whole series of other historical novels about invisible women or invisible historical personages, which went on to valide, sarah baartman,

and many others. seven, to be exact. you mentioned sarah baartman, and of course she was the southern african woman who was known in a derogatory way as the hottentot venus and was put on display and travelled around the west in the 19th century. and of course, sarah baartman is the subject of africa rising. it's sarah baartman that is the winged victory, that is the nike on top of the statue. with naomi campbell's profile. they chuckle. just going back to statues, though, because there's also a statue of theodore roosevelt who was us president in the early 20th century, and there's an equestrian statue of him outside the natural history museum in new york, flanked

by two shirtless figures — one native american, one african — and the idea was people objected to it because of the racial hierarchy depicted in that statue. it was removed earlier this year, early 2022, after being there for 80 years. do you think that was the right thing to do? and what would you like to see in its place? i would like to see in its place africa rising, which is a statue... ..which is a commission that i did for general services in 1997, which is, you know, downtown, completely obscured, because it's in the... ..it�*s in the area of 9/11. i think it was absolutely right to remove... ..to remove roosevelt's statue.

0k. and i'm hoping that something significant will happen with mine replacing it. so... it's, um... and it wouldn't be... it's not a matter of exchange. it's a matter of historical truth. it's a matter of... you know, 1619 — it goes back a long time. you'd like to see the roosevelt statue replaced with one of your sculptures, africa rising from around 1997—98, which is of a large concave black platform, on top is a winged figure. it's in manhattan now, and it stands on the site where bodies of enslaved africans were buried. i want to ask you this question. how important do you think the legacy of slavery is today?

how relevant is it? it is the... you know, it is the original sin. it is something... it is so, um... how can i say it? so essential a historical event in the soul of america until... i really don't think that we will ever.... ..be free of this history. now, we have to deal with it. it's not going to go away. it's not going to... it can be rewritten 1,000 times, but it is still going to be there. and as, you know, a great sort of...

um... a great thinker has said that history... ..that art is the only proof that history has ever happened. and, um... levi—strauss. and this is my... this is my contention that this is... that this is necessarily a question that has to be monumentalised in every way. history and art are very important to you, barbara chase—riboud, in your work and you use bronze a lot in homage to the lost wax method that was used in the ancient kingdoms of benin with the guild

of bronze makers there. you have your own twist on it. how important is your african heritage to you? well, you know that the benin method of lost wax is medieval and is the beginning, is really the foundation of lost wax casting, so i'm returning to my, quote unquote, roots. you're returning to your roots, but it's interesting because i know that you don't like being referred to as "african american." you call yourself "black american," so you're taking the african out of your identity. why is that? i'm not taking the african out of my identity! but you don't describe yourself... people are putting the african into my identity! if you, you know, allow me to say that. and as long as there are white americans,

there are going to be black americans. um... america is not one...a one—race country. but do you recognise your african heritage and you pay homage to it? you have only to look at my sculpture. of course. so looking at your sculpture, your work as a celebrated black american artist and sculptor, you know that there was a report the french government carried out in 2018 that said that 90% of african treasures and artefacts, works of art are held outside the continent. 0utside. do you believe in restitution? that these works should be returned to their continent? i believe in restitution. i believe...not in total restitution. um... i believe that certain works are universal and belong to humanity, not to africa or to europe or anybody else.

but, basically, i'm for restitution. even if there are circumstances which mean that the works of art may not be secure? we saw how the treasures of timbuktu... that's a... no. ..in mali — when it was overrun by extremists, people really worried about what would happen to these fine treasures in 2013. that's. .. that is really a colonial attitude towards art and also towards museums. and the fact that africa has made incredible progress in sort of excavating their own history and celebrating it, so that's not the problem. it's... you know, it's a false... you know, it's a false excuse.

you are not only an artist and a sculptor, you're also a poet and a novelist, and you have said you sculpt what you can't write and write what you can't sculpt. so how do you decide which is which, barbara? that is a very good question. they chuckle. i don't know how i do that. all i know is that for a very long time, i kept the two professions totally apart, and that now at the end of my life, finally there is a kind of conversion, or convergence of literature and sculpture. i have two retrospective sculpture exhibitions on back—to—back and i have my memoir, i always knew. yes.

so you've published your memoir, i always knew, which is structured around 30 years of letters to your late beloved mother. you know, you've been awarded the legion d'honneur france's highest order of merit. what would your mother, vivian may, think if she could see the heights which you've reached and the decorations you've received? my mother had such a kind of... ..wondrous attitude toward me. she often madejokes and said, "i don't know where you came from, barbara, "but i think they exchanged babies in the hospital!" they chuckle. i was very lucky, um... ..to have lived a life of great adventure without ever being wounded by my colour.

now, this... i think this is just dumb luck, because there... i was in a lot of situations where something like that would have happened or could have happened, but didn't happen. and so this... ..this kind of liberation of not having a brick... ..not having to face a brick wall made me perhaps brave... ..which is what my mother wanted me to be. barbara chase—riboud, thank you very much indeed for coming on hardtalk. i was delighted to be here. thank you.

hello there. november has been very mild, it's also been very wet. but as we head towards december, the weather pattern will change over the week ahead. it's going to be turning drier. it's also going to be turning colder. there may well be some mist and fog around as well. we've got a few patches of that developing already, particularly across north east england. it will be a colder start, i think, to monday morning. temperatures could be three or four degrees. there'll be a few showers around it as well. mist and fog will slowly lift during the morning. we'll see the showers fading away from scotland and northern ireland. sunshine around here. a few more showers coming in off the irish sea into west wales, south west england, and the odd one in the afternoon through the midlands and southern england. but large parts of the uk in the afternoon will be dry with some sunshine. the winds will be lighter. it may be a touch cooler though, although still temperatures reaching 10—11 celsius, which is on the mild side for this time of the year.

but things are going to get colder. we're going to find the showers are fading away and skies will clear overnight as this ridge of high pressure builds in in time for tuesday morning. and where the skies do remain clear, there may well be a risk of frost, particularly across parts of scotland. but given all the moisture after all that rain, we're more likely to find some mist and fog forming, particularly through the midlands, perhaps even into the central belt of scotland. and that fog could linger in a few places, keeping it particularly cold. where the fog does tend to lift in across large parts of the country, there will be some sunshine coming through, and we still could see temperatures reaching 9 celsius in belfast. where it stays grey and murky, though, with that mist and low cloud, temperatures will be near 6—7 celsius. weather fronts are trying to push in from the atlantic, not making a great deal of progress. we've got the weather blocked off by that high pressure extending from scandinavia. there's still a lot of cloud on the scene on wednesday, but the fog signal is much reduced because there's maybe a little bit more of a breeze.

and some places will see some sunshine. for many, though, still cloudy and those temperatures only around 7—8 celsius. the mild atlantic air that we've had through much of november really not making much progress in the uk. big blocking area of high pressure extends from scandinavia, keeping us in that colder weather as well. so if we look at the city forecast, you can see how those temperatures drop away. there's going to be a lot of cloud through the week ahead by the end of the week, maybe a few showers as we pick up an easterly wind.

welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, i'm karishma vaswani. the headlines: thousands take to the streets of chinese cities to protests against the strict covid restrictions — with some openly calling for president xi to stand down. the pandemic policy is prolonging our suffering. this policy is neither sustainable nor scientific. this policy won't change unless we speak up. the chinese embassy. we'll bring you all the latest reaction to events in china. also coming up on the programme: at least seven people

are killed in a landslide triggered by torrential rain on the italian island